Dr. Jessica Kriegel speaks with Tara Ataya, Chief People and Diversity Officer at Hootsuite, to explore the innovative and people-first strategies that Tara has implemented at Hootsuite to foster a culture of belonging, engagement, and empowerment. Tara shares her approach to navigating the balance between business goals and people-focused leadership, offering insights into the importance of listening, the power of servant leadership, and how Hootsuite has scaled a strong, inclusive culture across a global workforce. This conversation dives deep into the tactics that have made Hootsuite a leader in employee experience and how these strategies can be applied to other organizations.
What Is Your Why: Tara Ataya reveals her professional and personal “why,” which revolves around leaving every company and the world better than she found it, emphasizing the ripple effect of positive impact through strong human relationships.
Balancing Business and People: Tara discusses the tension between achieving business objectives and fostering a culture of belonging and wellness. She highlights the importance of ensuring that employees feel valued, safe, and engaged to drive business success.
Listening as Leadership: Tara emphasizes the significance of listening in leadership, sharing how Hootsuite employs surveys, focus groups, and culturally appropriate listening sessions to understand and meet the needs of their diverse workforce.
Innovative Culture Strategies: Tara details some of the unique strategies at Hootsuite, such as Perch Days and Hoot Pulse surveys, which foster collaboration, belonging, and continuous engagement among employees.
Overcoming Resistance and Building Leadership: Tara talks about the initial resistance to people-focused leadership at Hootsuite and how the leadership team overcame it by hiring and developing leaders aligned with a servant leadership model.
Walking the Walk: Jessica highlights the diversity and inclusiveness of Hootsuite’s leadership team and board, discussing how this reflects the company’s genuine commitment to DEI.
Mental Health and Employee Well-being: Tara shares the comprehensive mental health and wellness initiatives at Hootsuite, including increased mental health benefits, company-wide wellness weeks, and leadership training focused on empathy and support.
Future of People and Culture Leadership: Tara reflects on the future of people and culture leadership, considering how these roles can evolve beyond traditional HR and DEI functions to become integral to business strategy.
Personal Reflections: Tara offers her thoughts on what’s next for people and culture leaders, encouraging a shift towards more business-focused roles that lead from a people-centric perspective.
Tara Ataya is the Chief People and Diversity Officer at Hootsuite, known for her servant leadership style and dedication to creating inclusive, employee-centered workplaces. Tara has been instrumental in developing Hootsuite’s innovative culture strategies, making the company a leader in employee experience.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-ataya/
Jessica Kriegel:
Website: https://www.jessicakriegel.com/
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicakriegel
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jess_kriegel/
Culture Partners:
Website: https://culturepartners.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/culturepartners/
TRANSCRIPT
Jessica: Welcome to our Culture Leaders Conversation with Tara Aya, the Chief People and Diversity Officer at Hootsuite. Tara has dedicated her career to creating workplaces where people feel valued, engaged, and empowered. With a leadership style rooted in servant leadership, she has played a crucial role in shaping hootsuite’s inclusive and employee centered culture. But really, there are a lot of companies who talk a good talk, but don’t walk a good walk. And this one feels real. Today. Tara shares her insights on navigating the tension between business objectives and people focused leadership, scaling a strong company culture across a global workforce, and the importance of truly listening to employees. And boy, do they listen. We talk through how Hootsuite has developed unique strategies like perch days and hoot pulse surveys to foster collaboration and belonging, as well as their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Jessica: Tara, thank you so much for joining us. What is your why?
Tara: Thanks for having me, Jessica. My professional why and personal why is really the same. When I think about it in a professional setting, I endeavor to leave every company better than when I joined it. My hope personally is also that I leave the world better for the people that I love the most. And I may not be able to change the world in one wholesale swoop, but I can certainly have a ripple effect on those around me. So I love the idea of having a positive impact and really engaging with humans and people and building strong relationships. So that’s my why.
Jessica: Well, I’m curious to know how you define better, because as the chief people and diversity officer, you’re in business, so there seems to be a tension between what business exists for, which is to create shareholder value and what your mission seems to be, which is around creating more belonging and wellness in the workplace and making sure that people feel fulfilled at work. How do you navigate the tension between those two
Tara: Things? I think that’s a great question because there are a lot of organizations that will tell you that people are their greatest asset. I think part of my role is not about leveraging the tension point, but it’s more about how do I make sure that the company can get the best out of their people while also making sure that their people feel like they’re the greatest asset to the company. People are what make up companies and people who feel engaged, who feel safe, who feel that sense of belonging, who bring their best selves to work are the ones that are going to get the highest return on investment for the shareholders. They’re the ones that are going to deliver and execute against the goals, and they’re going to go above and beyond because they feel like it’s a symbiotic relationship between them and the company. So when I think about my role as a people and culture leader, it’s really focused on trying to make sure that people understand the strategy, but more so that they feel a part of the strategy, that they feel like they are owners of that strategy and that they are helping deliver on that strategy.
Jessica: And how big is Hootsuite?
Tara: So from a people perspective, we’re just about 1500 people now.
Jessica: Okay. So how do you scale that then? Making sure that people feel part of the strategy When you 1500 people, what’s the secret?
Tara: The secret is listening a lot actually. I think it’s one thing that a lot of leaders forget to do. You need to go out, you need to listen. You need to understand what motivates people where they’re at and meet people where they’re at. I think where a lot of strategies fail is they try to take a top down approach and you think as a leader, I know where we need to get to, but there’s a lot of change management involved. And when you think about change management, you can’t just blindfold people, fly them to a new location and say, welcome home. You need to figure out where everything is. You also need to move quick enough that you’re not walking them there. You can’t take them there step by step, but if you’re listening and you’re building trust, you can drive them there and you can have different points along the way that really help people acclimatize to where they are. And so I think the secret sauce really is about listening to people and understanding what’s motivating them and where they’re at and what they need, what roadblocks need to be removed, and then going from there.
Jessica: So getting down to logistics then, for those who are interested in doing more of that, what does it look like? Is it an employee engagement survey? How often is it? Do you do focus groups? How do you listen consistently?
Tara: Yeah, so I’ll give you a couple examples. When we were looking at doing our benefits redesign, for example, there isn’t a one size fits all approach. So what we did was we did surveying, which is a great way to get everybody to quickly give you a pulse, but then you go down and you need to double click and do focus groups. And focus groups are really a great way to help you as a leadership team understand what’s beneath the surface, right? So what are people telling you, but what are they not you? When we did our benefits redesign, one of the things we realized was that different regions needed different things, right? We’re a global organization and some of the things that mattered in North America, for example, didn’t matter to people in Romania. So we heard that inclusive benefits like gender affirmation surgery or fertility treatments were really important in North America. These aren’t things we found out in a survey. We found out through talking to people, through sitting down doing focus groups as a people team with our employees. And then we found out that in Mexico, for example, parking was really important at the office because people wanted to feel like there was a safe place to leave their car and feel like they could drive in. They didn’t want to take transit, so they would rather have that than something like fertility treatment.
These are things that you uncover when you actually double click into the things that matter in the region. We also, we do regular what we call hoot pulse. Everything at Hootsuite is Hootsuite applied, so all of our employees are called owls or peeps, and we do our hoot pulse, which is our engagement survey. We do it quarterly and we have hot topics that we talk about. So we just did an acquisition. One of the things we’re talking about is the integration, what’s missing, what do people need? And then after that, we do focus groups and we do manager round tables as well. It’s a shared responsibility. Culture is a team sport. It’s not just the people team or the people function driving culture or driving alignment or performance as an organization. It’s a team sport. We all play a part in it. So yeah, there’s listening sessions.
We also have culturally appropriate listening sessions as well for our underrepresented groups. So those are facilitated by an external party that helps us really understand the lived experiences of those underrepresented groups when we’re going through changes as a company. And those are just some examples of ways that people can lean in and hear what’s happening and making sure that there’s open communication. There isn’t hierarchy. Anybody in the company can slack any one of our executive members at any point in time. We also do ask me anythings regularly, which just leaves it open for questions and communication.
Jessica: So that’s a lot of work. I mean, I spent 10 years in HR at Oracle, a large technology company, and the people team was very prone to doing that kind of listening and surveying and slowing down and focusing on what was important, not just what’s urgent, but when you go zoom out of the HR team or the people team or the OWL team, whatever you guys call yourself, and you go to the development team and the sales team, sometimes it can be more challenging to get that leadership on board because it feels like slowing down towards a business result. So is that something that you get confronted with or is it just such a part of the culture that you don’t see resistance there?
Tara: We did see resistance initially. So I’ve been here for about four years now, and I would tell you that that’s a normal hurdle to overcome with your leadership team. I think ultimately they need to really believe that their success is tied to the success of their people, and if their people have what they need to do their best work, they will be successful as well. So it’s about creating that compelling reason why this matters for your management team and your leadership team, and then hiring for that as well. Making sure that when you’re going through the hiring process with new leaders coming in, that they’re following that servant leadership model so that they don’t think about this as a hygiene factor that they have to deal with. They feel like this is a big part of their role, leaning in, understanding everybody’s why, understanding what drives them, what motivates them, what they need to succeed, and then making sure that they’re removing barriers. So it is a lot of work. I think leadership is a behavior, it’s not a position, and so we treat leadership in that way here, but it took a while to get there with our leadership team.
Jessica: It’s interesting because here I am, a culture person interviewing a head of HR of a technology company, and I would argue that a lot of HR leaders would say some of the same things that you’re saying. They’re like, people come first. We like to listen. Employee experience is very important and it feels more real or true with you simply because, tell me if I’m biased or if this is true. When I’m looking up your company and I look at your leadership team, you’ve got a female CEO and maybe more female executives on your leadership team than men, and the board is also very diverse. I mean, it shouldn’t be shocking in 2024, but when I look at it, I’m shocked. I’m like, oh wait, maybe they actually do walk the walk that everyone is out there talking. Does it feel different to you than previous companies that you’ve worked at?
Tara: 100%. This is the first company I would tell you that I feel like I bring my entire self to work at. I am who I am at home, at work. It doesn’t matter. I think that it is different, and we’re not perfect. We are not perfect at all. I talk about this almost like building a muscle. You have to lift 10 pounds before you lift 20 and 30 and so on. So this is a journey, not a destination, and you constantly have to work at it. But we’ve done a lot of things that have really centered the employee in the journey for us. We just actually came back, this is my first day back from our wellness week, which is a company-wide shutdown focused on health and wellness. And that started during the pandemic, and it’s continued because it’s been so valuable for people. There’s just something really special about everybody being off at the same time.
And we do things like that that aren’t necessarily conventional or don’t directly show the return on investment, but they do have tangible results when we think about our strategy and how energized the company is and our ability to deliver. And so yeah, it is different here and we’ve put a lot of effort into that employee experience. And I think that one of the things that has really been a game changer is that our leadership team wants to be at an amazing company with the best employee experience. We’ve all worked for companies, we’ve all worked for leaders that talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. And so we all strive to be better than that and try to create something better than that for our people.
Jessica: So with such a focus on that, and you said we’re not perfect, obviously no one is ever a hundred percent satisfied all of the time. When you see pockets where there is dissent or upset people, friction, people feeling like they’re being forgotten or maybe they’re not being seen, how do you identify those? How do you then address that? Or does it work itself out over time?
Tara: No, we don’t let things work itself out. I think our tendency here as a leadership team is to just lean right in. It’s really uncomfortable. You have to be willing to have the hard conversations, but if there are pockets of people that are concerned or feeling unhappy, we need to ask why and hear them and listen and be prepared for answers that might not be perfect for us or might not fit in perfectly to our strategy. And then we’ve got to figure out how to solve for it. I think the key too is going in with a growth mindset and not thinking that decisions are always binary. There’s always a way to think through a problem differently and solve it so that maybe we meet 80% of that person’s need. We can’t be a hundred percent to all people all the time, but helping people come along on the journey with us and then also trying to adapt as we see fit.
We also, one of the things we do at Hootsuite is we are not heavily policy driven. We have a lot of strategies like our distributed workforce strategy and things like that. So we’re not managing heavily on policy and procedure, which allows us a lot more flexibility as a leadership team to be able to adapt and change and not have things written in stone. And it also, it gives employees the space to challenge things too, so they don’t feel like, oh, we’ve done it this way forever and nobody’s going to hear us. We’re not happy with the way things are going. One of the things we talk about as a leadership team when we do our hoot checks, which is our weekly all hands meeting with the entire company, is we talk about failures. We talk about things we got wrong, we talk about where somebody’s challenged an idea and we’ve changed course because of it. And those are important moments because it creates that psychological safety for people to challenge things. But yeah, ultimately we lean in and we have the hard conversations when we need to have ’em. You can’t just let something, there are certain things that will work themselves out, but it’s always better to lean in and at least understand it even if you can’t solve for it right away.
Jessica: Weekly, all hands meetings, that’s surprising. I mean, I’ve never heard of a weekly all hands meeting for a company that size, how long are those meetings and who leads those meetings?
Tara: Yeah, it’s 15 minutes with our CEO and we have wins, we have failures, we have different celebrations. It’s sort of like scrolling TikTok for 15 minutes really quickly, getting your news, your updates, being able to lean in on some of the hot topics that are going on. So yeah, it’s our global 15 minute check-in every week.
Jessica: And you also mentioned distributed workforce strategy. So you let people decide if they work at home or if they come into the office. How many offices do you have and can you also tell us about perch days? I think that’s an awesome idea.
Tara: Yeah, for sure. We have over 13 offices. We’ve actually got a few more now that we have the acquisition, but we’ve got some duplicates that we’re working through. And so our distributed workforce strategy, a lot of companies changed during the pandemic and said, okay, it’s remote or it’s hybrid. Ours is, as you mentioned, employee led. So they get to choose where they’re working and if they want to come into an office. One of the things we did hear was that people, there were certain people that really missed the in-office moments, but they weren’t looking for in-office coming for eight hours a day, five days a week, and sitting beside each other on calls or sitting beside each other writing code. They were looking for those moments of connection and collaboration. So we created a program called Perch Days. We piloted it again, it’s Hootsuite five, right?
Owls come and perch for a little while. So this is where we have owls coming in a couple days a week. It’s personal choice. So if they don’t want to come in, they don’t have to come in. But we do find with a lot of our extroverted employees, for example, a lot of the sales folks, they like to come in, they like to be around people, hear other sales calls, things like that. And we’ve created the days in such a way that we’re getting teams to collaborate. So it might mean that sales and marketing have the same perch days. It might mean that the people function. We adapt our perch days depending on our client groups within the different departments, things like that. And then we have different lunch and learns and things that really draw people in. But the point of it isn’t to mandate it, it’s to create a gravitational poll that encourages people to come into the offices and have those moments of collaboration rather than feeling like they’re mandated to sit next to each other for eight hours, eight hours a day.
Jessica: Yeah. So it sounds idyllic. What are the biggest challenges that you continue to run into or the big thing that you want to evolve or adapt about next?
Tara: Yeah, I would say part of the challenge with it is because we are a global workforce, it is hard to get everybody into spaces with new people. So a lot of times when I go in for perch days, I’m going to be in tomorrow, I’m going to see many of the same people that I would normally see, but I don’t get to see the people from other offices and things like that. So that’s where we start thinking about how in the future, how do we invest to make sure that there are moments of collaboration that global teams get to come together, that cross-functional groups get to come together and have those moments that aren’t necessarily the everyday moments in the office. I would say one of the other challenges too that we have faced that we’re constantly evolving is just making sure that our spaces are set up so that there is the ability to collaborate. And so our Vancouver office, which is where we were founded, was the first that we really renovated and made sure that it was inclusive and there was lots of space for people to collaborate and get together and socialize, but we’re constantly doing that with the other offices. So that’s another piece on the roadmap that as we think through the longer term strategy around perch days, we continue to evolve that.
Jessica: One of the things that we have talked about a lot is DEI and how these days, I mean, I actually saw an article last week that said America may get its first DEI presidential candidate talking about Kamala Harris, and it’s so clear that people have no, I mean, the term DEI is now associated with affirmative action or just being black. I mean, it’s not any longer about inclusiveness and equity and diversity of all forms. It’s just become this affirmative action thing that one side of the political aisle feels very strongly against. And interestingly, in our own research, we saw political polarization increasing in the workplace where one of the best things about culture in these people that we surveyed, they said it was diversity, equity, and inclusion. And the other half of the people said one of the worst things about culture was woke ideology. So I’m curious, how do you run into that, this kind of other side of the aisle view of DEI in the work that you’re doing internally and or externally? And what do you say or how do you combat that? Or do you combat it?
Tara: Yeah, I mean, I think we run into it more on the candidate side of things. And I think how we combat that is we are really clear about who we are as a company. And I think when you go out and you tell people who you are and you tell them what you believe in and what you stand for and what matters to you, it means that people who don’t align with that aren’t attracted to your company. And I think it took us a while to get really clear on who we are. We went through a redesign of what normal companies would call their values. We call them guiding principles, and we call them guiding principles for a couple of different reasons. But the guiding principles that we have are all, every single one of them has diversity, equity, and inclusion at the heart of it, even our customer obsessed, which is one of our guiding principles, and one of the things we do is we shout it from the rooftops.
We talk about the fact that we are neighbors and allies. We talk about the fact that one team for us means not just about working together as one team, but it means that every person can come as they are and be who they are, and they’re going to be respected and they’re going to be safe, and they’re going to feel like they belong here. And so people who don’t align with that generally aren’t attracted to our company because we are pretty clear about it. And even going through the interview process, we ask about pronouns, we ask about things that matter to people in an inclusive environment. And so I think that’s one way that companies can really just help combat that upfront is know who you are. And there are companies on the other side of that coin that are saying, we’re not going to lean into these conversations. We don’t want to talk about this stuff at work, but that’s not who we are. We believe that you bring your full self to work and you should, and our job as an employer is to get the best out of you while you’re here and make sure that this is a safe environment for you. So I think as long as companies are really clear upfront with candidates about who they are, with their customers, about who they are, it helps combat it right off the bat versus having to lean into those conversations later on.
Jessica: Yeah, that’s interesting. I mean, what we always say is that A DEI project is not going to move the needle on results because projects have a beginning, a middle, and an end that the only way those things are going to drive results, which our research shows diversity of leadership does drive results in terms of the bottom line. The only way though is if it’s a part of your culture, the way you think and act, the guiding principles so to speak, and the experiences that people are having every day are going to lead them to either believe that they are safe and included and they belong or not. So it’s got to be part of the culture for it to be effective. What are your reactions to the backlash you’ve been seeing with the Supreme Court and just the political noise with the election year right now on how that is a distraction and not good for business?
Tara: I think it’s tough. And one of the things that I go to is just the emotional toll that it takes on our people, especially in North America. I think about this emotional roller coaster that our underrepresented groups have been on over the last few years. We know that the pandemic had more of a toll on underrepresented groups than anybody else. And so I think it just encourages us as a company to lean in even more to make sure that there are those culturally appropriate support mechanisms in place, that people have what they need. And while we can’t necessarily control the external world when they come to work, that stuff shouldn’t matter and it shouldn’t get in the way of how they feel they’re doing at work. And so I think there’s no perfect solution to solving for this challenge, but it’s what can we do as an employer to make sure when you’re here for the hours that you’re here and when you’re not here, what do we have in terms of wellness, mental health support, culturally appropriate trauma counseling, things like that for our people so that they feel like they have the support mechanisms in place to help manage through that.
But my mind immediately goes to just the toll it takes and the stress that people are under right now who are listening to this and who are turning on the news and feeling the strain from this. Yeah.
Jessica: I’m curious what you’re doing around the area of mental health for your employees, maybe beyond health benefits and mental health counseling that I think most organizations are doing now. Have you noticed an uptick in mental health challenges of your employees? And what, if anything, are you doing uniquely to address it?
Tara: Yeah, so one of the things that we did do when we went through our redesign for benefits was look at this holistically. I mean, I mentioned the wellness week, which is the time off. We increased our mental health benefits in North America by six times the average for people. And I’ll give you an example. One of the things that if people are looking for counseling support, there’s no limit on their ability to access that. And so we make sure that we offer the support as needed for people. The other thing that we do that I think people did a lot during the pandemic and then they lost sight of was just continuing to de-stigmatize mental health in the workplace. And so making it okay to talk about when you’re not okay and leading with empathy is really important. It’s something that we’ve actually built into our leadership training models so that leaders, they’re trained and they learn about how to ask people how they’re doing and listen to what they’re not saying, or look for signals that somebody might not be okay and make sure that they’re leaning in when they need to, and that people have a safe space to speak up or advocate for themselves and just normalize these conversations internally.
So I think there are things like that that organizations can do outside of just their normal mental health benefits coverage to make sure that they’re building this into their culture and building this into their practices.
Jessica: Well, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation because it really does feel like you are an organization that’s walking the walk, like I said, and it’s nice to hear from someone who’s actually got some solutions to the challenges that we’ve all been talking about. So my last question for you before I let you go, and this is my favorite one, is what’s something that you don’t get asked about very often in these types of interviews that you wish you were asked more often?
Tara: I would say, I guess the question, which I probably don’t have a great answer to yet, but the question would be, what’s next for people and culture leaders? I think that there are so many opportunities for people, leaders, people and culture leaders to move beyond the typical HR or de and I roles and think differently about business strategy and how they move into more of a business focused role that is leading from the front when it comes to people. And so maybe that’s the question is what’s next for people and culture leaders?
Jessica: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. And where can people learn more about you or about Hootsuite? If they want to dig in deeper
Tara: So they can come to hootsuite.com, they can go to my LinkedIn. I’m happy to connect, and we’re always on social. We are very social friendly company as you would be. Yeah, we’re in the social business, so find us anywhere on social. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Tara. Thank you so much, Jessica.
